Regenaration of the unfinished: a new urban ecosystem for Calatrava’s Sports City complex in Rome

The intervention consists in a rearrangement of the suburbs area of Tor Vergata, aiming to reconnect it to the rest of the city of Rome and to complete its urban fabric. The project also includes the regeneration of the unfinished "City of Sport", by the architect S. Calatrava, creating a cultural center and support for the University of Tor Vergata.

The project aims to create a masterplan designed to reconfigure and reconnect the area of Tor Vergata to the rest of the city, but also to regenerate the urban void and to reconnect the abandoned artifacts. The common thread to join all these elements is the greenery in all of its aspects, reflecting today’s main potential of this area. The reorganization of both primary and secondary roads is planned by the design of a regular grid built on two main axes, which delimit the built part from the natural one. On this matrix, we can identify various functional area of the masterplan and in each one a new intervention is placed. The only recognizable fabric in this area is the one of the suburb: discontinuous and against regulation. This area is going to be densified, maintaining its original purpose, using a specific type of urban settlement, alternate with agricultural lots. A new university campus is designed next to this area; it consists of an aggregation of volumes, which maintain a linear development, complying with the surrounding landscape. The first important regeneration intervention is a km 0 market, inserted in the Jubilee area of 2000. Nevertheless, the focus of the project is the repurposing of the “Vela”, in which there is going to be designed a large auditorium for events and a botanical garden. The purpose is to design a contemporary ruin in which vegetation re-appropriates the architectural object; all the new functions are arranged in light volumes simply placed on the pre-existence while the vegetation defines paths and the differentiation of spaces. The resulting image maintains its landmark vocation while harmonizing with the landscape. The theme of the forest characterizes the two bodies: in the one without the cover, the vegetation is seen as a mass and it replaces the missing cover itself; for its spontaneous organization, it takes the name of primordial wood. In the second, a forest-like spatiality is recreated through the design of artificial elements; the pillars and the light boxes of the greenhouses recreate the image of a tree, with its trunk and foliage, forming the artificial forest.